Wings of Broodwar: Battle for Arrakis - Page 4

On January 26 2012 05:48 FidoDido wrote:KKND got me into RTS gaming.. I wonder if anyone here has ever heard of it.

I owned and played it. Was interesting, though at the time it annoyed me with running out of oil on all the campaign missions. (I turtled and then killed everything in all RTS games.) Think I recall one map where I lose 5+ times in a row to early attacks I simply couldn't stop.

As for the OP, I can agree with that feeling. Things getting easier and shinier as time passed. Then it hit a level where I was happy and continued on. Though UMS games are more fun with large amount of unit selections, wish SC2 had unlimited, would have been even more fun then.

What you said about the dune infantry made me remember how for me the single most awesome part of Brood War was the kill count. I mostly played vs the AI in BGH, all the time, because I could amuse myself by checking out which where the deadlier units. I had the most fun just sending marine squads and seeing if the 8 kills marine was badass enough to survive another wave of zerglings.

Really awesome read. Extremely well written, brilliantly expressed. It took me a few minutes to get into it...but then 15 minutes disappeared without me noticing.

I also agree with your underlying messages. (When you started comparing DuneII mechanics to BW mechanics, I saw the connection and was really hoping you'd do it between BW and SC2...and you delivered! :D)

I looked at it, and thought that it was unreasonably long. I looked at it, and found time, because I knew that it had been spotlighted for a reason.

By the end of it...I remembered. I remembered that sc2 isn't just about people who cared about broodwar. I remembered what brought me into broodwar in the first place. I remembered the joys behind finding out about RTS, about broodwar/vanillia, about the magic of playing this game.

And the opportunities and newer players that found enjoyment through starcraft 2.

I used to love Red Alert. I thought it was waaay better than starcraft. Of course I had only played starcraft for something like a half hour. I was just being a fanboy, and after having spent something like two more hours on starcraft I was ready to renounce my faith. At that point it wasn't about mechanics or depth of play or anything of course. It was just the atmosphere. Space marines, out in fucking space, fighting spacebugs to a country-music soundtrack. Roughnecks smoking cigars inside their space suits while blasting protoss and hooooly shit they have shields!

Awesome.

As for Starcraft 2, I suppose I don't really have an issue with the game being simple per se. It's more about how some of the mechanics and units are just plain boring/gimmicky.

Excuse me hun, but what is your name? Vivian? I woke up next to you naked and, uh, did we, um?

Really interesting read. A sure 5/5.It's refreshing to see a different perspective on ease of mechanics, balance and all of that shit that people talk about onTL.There's just one thing I can't wrap my head around. If you liked the very deep mechanics of Dune II, don't you kind of miss that in SC2 where there aren't really these small things that you can exploit?

I still remember that my very first internet name, way back in the day, was Saboteur... after that devious little suited Ordos demo man.I still remember me and my buddy reciting the "You... attack... that" mantra over and over as we individually selected and instructed our units to form a single-file death march across the map.I still remember saving and reloading, hoping for a different placement of the nuke that otherwise would have wiped out my entire power infrastructure.I still remember laughing as single squads of fremen would take down important parts of their base because the AI would randomly consider them invisible and not defend themselves.I still remember building ridiculous defenses of rocket turrets to keep me safe while I developed an unstoppable army of the hardest-hitting unit I could manage.

Great read, read through the whole thing. I think the ending bit about difficulty and BW/SC2/RTS in general was the best way that anyone has talked about the popularity of these games as Esports or popularity in general and should, if this were a logical world, be enough to shut up people on both sides of the argument.

I never had the luxury of playing those Dune games. I started with C&C and TA myself. Good times though...

I just wish that SC2 had more depth to it. I think it's a very good game for casuals, just like MOBAs, but there's just not that element of pure execution skill that BW had. It's just never going to last if it remains this accessible. The fact is, I don't watch pro BW because I can go out and copy all the strats pros use. I watch BW because I know what they're doing and that I'll never be able to execute it. It's also the reason I keep playing BW, because I know there's always more to work towards.

SC2 is a good game for casual players and fun games between friends. It is not a good esport, despite the amount of time, money, and energy people are putting towards it. It doesn't have what it takes to last as an esport, because it's missing that execution element. Sports are about pushing people to the limits of their abilities, and SC2 almost always does not do that at high level. It's much more like poker than BW, where people simply throw down what they perceive is the best move with incomplete information, and if things work out well the best player will win.. most of the time. I can beat anyone in the world in poker. I can't ever beat any NBA player.

Wow Dune is the reason why I play RTS. It's actually the first computer game I remember playing. I tried playing it a few years ago and it was actually so hard to play beause of the graphics and UI. Either way the story was awesome, the game play was awesome and the units were awesome. I love the Dune lore so much that I actually sat through half a book of Dune(which I eventually deemed too slow paced for my liking) Starcraft lore has a similar effect on me. Such a deep lore that just the lore alone will get you interested in the game. I'm not a great player but I love RTS and I love lore. The lore was so key to both games.

On January 26 2012 08:37 EternaLLegacy wrote:I never had the luxury of playing those Dune games. I started with C&C and TA myself. Good times though...

I just wish that SC2 had more depth to it. I think it's a very good game for casuals, just like MOBAs, but there's just not that element of pure execution skill that BW had. It's just never going to last if it remains this accessible. The fact is, I don't watch pro BW because I can go out and copy all the strats pros use. I watch BW because I know what they're doing and that I'll never be able to execute it. It's also the reason I keep playing BW, because I know there's always more to work towards.

SC2 is a good game for casual players and fun games between friends. It is not a good esport, despite the amount of time, money, and energy people are putting towards it. It doesn't have what it takes to last as an esport, because it's missing that execution element. Sports are about pushing people to the limits of their abilities, and SC2 almost always does not do that at high level. It's much more like poker than BW, where people simply throw down what they perceive is the best move with incomplete information, and if things work out well the best player will win.. most of the time. I can beat anyone in the world in poker. I can't ever beat any NBA player.

Yet poker is an international sport with massive prize pools with major tournaments shown on ESPN. Poker is a lot more then just "playing your best hand with little information". You could beat anyone int he world at poker, but I highly doubt you could consistently beat the top professionals. The point the author made I believe is that SC2 is a hard game as well, just in a different way from BW just as BW is different from Dune. There are problems with SC2, but remember that its been out for a year with two new expansion packs to release. Look at the first SC1 when it first came out. It was pretty freakin ridiculous, you could hardly call it a balanced or well made game at that point (most of the features it is lauded for are accidental and not intentional, it was simply the best offered at that point and they needed to work to balance the game to the new engine). SC2 I believe has the potential to become one of the greatest e-sports if we give it time, bring in the best players, and allow it to flourish. The execution aspect of SC2 has hardly been touched at this point from many mediocre players.

wow, amazing read. I'll never get my friends to read the whole thing, but I'll send them the link anyway. You've made me realize why I love watching/playing SC2 so much. For the past 2 years (ok, sense beta) I've been obsessed, and you are right. It is because I feel like I can do the things Idra does if I just work a little harder on my inject timings, ect...

Loved the bit about how what the pros do SEEMS possible but it's actually not. Like, I remember watching MMA at MLG Columbus do triple pronged drops and I thought "WOW I'm gonna play Terran now because that's so cool to do, and doesn't seem that hard!" then I realized I couldn't even figure out how to swap my barracks with my factory so I can open reactor hellion.

5/5, the evolution of gaming is a beautiful thing. It's almost a win/lose situation when you think about games getting less glitchy while simultaneously getting less 'magical'. Discovering all the little nuances in broodwar was what made me really fall in love with the game, although I was more of a custom map guy then a 1v1 player.